The topic will be the ongoing 2016 Tribunal of the U.S. Black Women’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“Black Women’s Blueprint cordially invites you to the 2016 Tribunal of the U.S. Black Women’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a four day event from April 28-May 1, 2016, to be held as a part of the International Decade of People of African Descent at the United Nations. The Truth Commission reflects a continued process five years in the making, involving national grassroots activism, direct service healing practice and participatory action research by Black Women’s Blueprint and survivors across the country on sexual violence as a human rights atrocity against women and girls of African descent past and present, which has never been acknowledged or sufficiently addressed.” read more…

One of our guest speakers tonight is Vanessa Green who is the Senior Supervisor of the VCS Domestic Violence Program for Men, a New York Model Batterer Program. Vanessa is also the Racial Justice Organizer and is an organizer of all anti-oppression work of the VCS Community Change Project, including VCS Pride, their Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender initiative.

Before VCS in 2001, Vanessa began her anti-violence work as the Director of the Rape Crisis Program in Orange County, NY. In her capacity as Racial Justice Organizer, Vanessa, organizes to bring the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond Undoing Racism Workshop annually to Rockland County. Vanessa works tirelessly on building a movement to undo structural racism in our lifetime and to bring an analysis of structural racism as outlined by the People’s Institute to Rockland and Orange County communities.

Vanessa is widely recognized in New York State as an activist in the fight to end men’s violence against women. In 2005, she participated in a documentary by Dr. Chyng Feng Sun from Columbia University on pornography and its impact on women.

In addition, Vanessa’s article, “The Impact of Pornography on Women” was published and shared widely. Her specific interests revolve around Human’s rights, women’s rights and sexuality, and race and identity politics concerning diaspora’d peoples.

While organizing to end racial injustice in Rockland and Orange Counties, Vanessa took a Freedom Ride to Ferguson in August 2014 where she spent time organizing with Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac and 600-plus members from Black Lives Matters from across the country and Canada. She is Co-chair of Black Lives Matter Rockland-Orange, organizing in those two counties around issues of White Supremacy.

She joined the Board of Black Women’s Blueprint in 2015 and is acting Treasurer. As a multi-generational New Afrikan, Vanessa was raised by an outspoken and politically active mother, Jean Green, and has two beautiful children, Nyisha and Ahkiem.